Determining the microstructure of colloidal suspensions under shear flows has been a challenge for theoretical and computational methods due to the singularly perturbed boundary-layer nature of the problem. Previous approaches have been limited to the case of hard-sphere systems and suffer from various limitations in their applicability. We present an alternative analytic scheme based on intermediate asymptotics which solves the Smoluchowski diffusion-convection equation including both intermolecular and hydrodynamic interactions. The method is able to recover previous results for the hard-sphere fluid and to predict the radial distribution function (rdf) of attractive fluids such as the Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluid. In particular, a new depletion effect is predicted in the rdf of the LJ fluid under shear. This method can be used for the theoretical modeling and understanding of real fluids subjected to flow, with applications ranging from chemical systems to colloids, rheology, plasmas, and atmospherical science.

• Received 1 January 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.052606